


take me while i'm talking revelation

by seventhstar



Category: Hellsing, Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Death, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dark, Knowledge of Hellsing Not Required, M/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Vampire Hunters, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-03 02:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4083856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/pseuds/seventhstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hellsing AU.</p>
<p>Ryoga and Rio are monster hunters, trained from childhood to defend their nation from supernatural threats. For a long time, they've done their duty without hesitation or difficulty.</p>
<p>Now a new breed of artificial vampires is sweeping bloodily across the country. The line between monster and human is getting thinner. And the past is coming back to bite...</p>
<p>[You don't need to have read or watched Hellsing to understand this, but it helps. For newcomers, I recommend either the original Hellsing manga (10 volumes) or the Hellsing Ultimate OVA series (10 episodes), which can be streamed for free on Hulu.</p>
<p>If you haven't watched Zexal, this is probably not going to be that interesting to you. Sorry, Hellsing fans!]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So, I actually have the prologue + 3 chapters of this written, but I'm not going to post them all at once. You'll have to wait a few days for chapter two! Enjoy!

He jolts awake at four am, forty minutes ahead of schedule.

 _Nightmare,_ he thinks, although he doesn’t remember his dreams and hasn’t for a long time. Shark Drake is in bed with him, body curled around his protectively; Ryoga can feel his presence and the warmth of his body against him; the room is pitch black, kept that way by blackout curtains over the windows and door. At some point in the night he grabbed the dagger he keeps under his pillow. The hilt is warm and sweaty.

No smell of blood. At least he grabbed the right end this time.

“Was it him?” Shark Drake laughs.

Ryoga scowls.

“You’re too soft, pup,” he says mockingly.  Ryoga can hear his teeth clicking together. The whole room smells like the ocean when Shark Drake is there, and the scent always lingers. It drives Rio mad; she’s always burning candles to drive out the smell.

Ryoga likes it. It keeps him from forgetting his purpose.

Like he is right now.

He doesn’t have any pictures, any letters, any physical reminders. He doesn’t say his name. He knows Rio burns the letters that come without reading them. He knows it’s been five years, and five years is a long time.

Ryoga has no desire to remember any of the battles he’s lost, or any of the people he’s been unable to save, or the day his parents and died. Mostly, he thinks he’s lost the ability to remember his dreams because it’s the only way he can stay sane.

If he could choose one, though, he’d want to remember this one. Even if it’s a nightmare. Sometimes he’s afraid he’ll forget Yuuma’s face.

Four fifteen.

He sighs. He shoves Shark Drake away. Maybe he’ll just start his workout early.

 

 


	2. one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Knights in bloody armor and little lost girls.

The vampire is hardier than it looks, and Ryoga’s first shot doesn’t kill it immediately.

It continues to rampage, despite the bloody hole in its forehead and the remains of its brain dripping out of the back of its skull. He scowls; the really feral ones are always annoying.

Shooting it more isn’t going to do anything. He grabs his lance and goes in for the kill.

It’s not much of a fight once the vampire is blind, and missing an arm. Ryoga does the requisite cut through the spine, then decapitates it. The squad moves in with accelerant, and they pile up the ghouls and the fledglings. Then they stand around waiting while the bodies burn.

He taps his earpiece twice to dial Rio.

“We’re done.”

“Get back here,” she snaps. She doesn’t insult him by asking if he’s hurt. “He’s unbearable when you’re gone.”

“We found a chip!” One of the squad -- Fernwood, Ryoga recalls, new but eager -- holds up the bloody bit of circuitry. Over the phone, Rio swears angrily.

“See if you can find something,” she says before she hangs up.

Ryoga looks around the dilapidated house, the crumbling roof and rotting floor and peeling paint, everything splattered with gore. The blood on his uniform isn’t even dry, and he’s already got more work to do. He digs around in his belt for the bug detector.

“Start sweeping. Alpha team in basement, Gamma on the second floor. Radio in if you find anything.”

“What are we looking for, boss?”

The truth is, he has no idea what they’re looking for. He’s picked through too many places like this, searching for some meaning behind the outbreak of freaks pouring into the country. So far, they’ve turned up nothing.

But he can’t tell them he thinks the task is hopeless.

“Anything that looks suspicious.”

“Like what?”

“Use your fucking brain,” Ryoga snaps.

That satisfies everyone, and the squad splits into two and gets to work. That leaves Ryoga alone, on the ground floor, with the box full of ashes marked for disposal and the battle-wrecked furniture. He wipes down the sharp end of the lance.

His search turns up no bugs, no electronics, no safes or papers. There are some clothes in the dresser that might have belonged to the fledglings; they’re the right size for two little boys. Ryoga dutifully goes through all the pockets. There’s one photograph wedged under a loose floorboard, of a happy family.

Ryoga touches the fang around his neck. It’s steel, coated in silver, the point dangerously sharp. It’s a weapon of last resort.

His parents gave it to him, back when they were alive and training him to hunt monsters. Probably there were moments in his childhood when he looked like these two tiny smiling children. He can’t remember any.

He tucks the photograph into his pocket.

There’s nothing else of interest in the room. They’ll have to run facial recognition on the footage from their body cams and hope they can identify the vampire and its victims. Maybe that will turn up a clue, although so far all the targets have been homeless people and difficult foster children. People who were expected to vanish. People who no one would report if they went missing or ran away.

“Nothing downstairs, boss,” The leader of Alpha squad, Akari, tells him. A strand of her hair is poking out of her helmet. It’s soaked in blood. “Looks like the fledglings were sleeping down there. There’s a box…”

She trails off. She has kids, maybe, Ryoga thinks.

“We found something upstairs.” Gamma squad is led by Mizael, Ryoga’s second. He’s carrying an experimental anti-vampire taser; Ryoga considers mocking him for it. He knows Mizael only gets to do the weapons testing because he’s basically living out of Durbe’s quarters. But he doesn’t.

Ryoga isn’t _always_ an asshole.

“What is it?”

One of Mizael’s men holds out a bundle, which Mizael accepts gingerly in exchange for a laptop he’s got under his arm. A bloody blanket, with long green hair poking out of the top of it. A blanket that is moving.

“She was in the closet upstairs.”

“Mizael --”

“She hasn’t fed yet.”

“Christ.”

The blanket falls a little. She’s a tiny thing, with big wide eyes that glow eerily in the dark. There’s blood on her dress, on her neck, on her arms, but not around her mouth. She’s got tiny little fangs.

She’s sniffling, but she says nothing. Ryoga can imagine her terror, though, and he realizes that he’s thinking of her as _“she”_. Not _“it”_.

She’s cute. She looks sort of like Rio used to. _Fuck._

“Move out,” he says.

“Boss --”

“Mizael, get her into the basement, she’ll fall asleep when the sun comes up. I’ll handle the rest of it. Uh...hey. Kid.”

She looks directly at him.

“Yeah, you. What’s your name?”

Her response is so soft he can’t make it out. Ryoga leans it, and does his best to be reassuring, or as reassuring as someone wearing gore-spattered body armor can be.

“Come on, kid, speak up.”

“Iris,” she whispers. “Where’s my mom and dad?”

They’re dead. He knows they’re dead. But she looks sad enough, and they can’t risk a fledgling vampire losing it here, and Ryoga hates making little kids cry, no matter what the soldiers say behind his back.

“I’ll...I’ll find out for you.” He pats her head. Her eyes are huge and liquid and hopeful. “We’re gonna take you to a safe place, okay?”

“Okay,” she says, and she pulls the blanket over her head. Mizael cradles her against his chest. He’s not great with kids, either, but Ryoga trusts him not to hurt her just because she’s a vampire.

“Move out,” he says again, and this time everyone does.

He shoulders his lance. Someone grabs the ashes. He doesn’t look back; the sound of boots clomping tells him they’re all following.

He stands by while they get into the vans, though. Ryoga never gets in until he’s counted them all, until he’s sure he’s bringing everyone back alive.

Rio is in the barracks when they unload; she dismisses everyone, even Mizael when he tries to give his report. She’s obviously just come from a meeting; she’s still in her suit and heels, tiny sapphires glinting in each ear. She looks furious.

Ryoga goes straight to her; somewhere behind him, Mizael ducks back into the van to smuggle Iris away. He’ll tell Rio, soon. Later.

“He flooded the basement. Again.”

Ryoga laughs.

Rio punches him.

“What?”

“Next time, just take him with you.”

“I didn’t need him!”

“Yes, but if you leave for longer than a week, he gets bored.” Rio rips out her hair tie so hard it snaps. Hair falls into her eyes as she falls into step beside him. She is as tall as he was now; her growth was stunted while she was in the coma. She used to be shorter.

But she has no scars. No marks. No lingering injuries. If her coma hadn’t been so traumatic for him, Ryoga could even forget it happened.

“He listens to you.”

“But he likes you.” Rio stops to key in the passcode to get into her office. The door slides shut automatically behind them as they enter.

It’s a stark, bare room: desk, chair, huge, pin-studded map on the far wall. They go over to it together. Ryoga picks up a pin and stabs into the vampire nest he spent all evening destroying.

There are pins everywhere on the map. Red for single vampires. Green for ghouls. Yellow if there were fledglings. Black if all three were present. White if there was more than one vampire.

“You found a computer?”

“Mizael said he found it hidden upstairs.”

“We’ll see what Durbe finds, then.”

He needs to give her his report. What is he going to say, though? He found another artificial vampire that had no idea what it was doing? A house of ghouls probably made from squatters trying to get out of the cold? Two little kids turned into vampires and executed for nothing?

He brought home a little vampire girl, and now he’s attached to her?

He’s given her twenty reports just like this one (mostly like this one). She can read Mizael’s report when he files it.

“...were there children?”

He freezes.

“I can tell from your expression.”

He pulls out the picture of the dead boys and hands it to her.

She holds it up to the light. It’s faded, worn, creased where it’s been folded. The boys in it look like they’re the same age. Maybe they’re twins.

“Poor things,” Rio whispers. “They never even knew what happened to them. They died for nothing.”

“They cried.” Ryoga’s voice sounds like it’s coming from far away. “Before I shot them.”

She puts the picture under the map, pins it with a white pin. She puts her hand on his arm.

“...you should go downstairs. Pacify Shark Drake.”

“Yeah.”

She hugs him. Ryoga almost flinches as she squeezes him; Rio isn’t usually this touchy. He must look terrible.

“And while you’re down there, you can find out the name of the fledgling you and Mizael brought home.”

Ryoga chokes.

“What, you thought I didn’t know? Idiot. Go.”

“...Iris.”

“What?”

“Her name is Iris.”

Rio sighs. She looks pinched and tired, but she smiles at him. “At least you didn’t bring home any cats.”

He takes that for what it is -- forgiveness -- and steps out of the office. He’ll come back later, after everyone else is asleep, to bully Rio into bed.

Right now, he should go tell Shark Drake to knock it off.

 


	3. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's no place for a little girl to live.

“Excuse me.” Small hands are shaking him. Ryoga slowly lets go of his weapon, reminds himself to give Iris the ‘no surprising people while they’re asleep’ talk again, and opens his eyes.

It’s dark, and he can barely see her. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, in her pink pajamas. She’s dirty; she must have been crawling through the vents again. _Security really needs to get on that,_ Ryoga thinks.

She tugs on his sleeve. Of course she does. She has vampiric night vision and a vampiric sleep cycle, and sometimes she forgets that the rest of them are mere humans.

“Yeah?”

“Can I sleep with you?” She slides under the blanket beside him. Her hands are ice cold. “I had a bad dream.”

Ryoga rolls over as much as he can -- Shark Drake is behind him, no doubt planning to pop out at the worst possible moment -- so that she can curl up with her head on his pillow. He tucks the blanket in under her chin.

When Rio caught Iris in his room the first time, she pulled him aside to explain to him exactly how dangerous it was to have a fledgling vampire with him when he was asleep and vulnerable.

“Shark Drake sleeps in there with me,” Ryoga said.

“Why would you admit that to me?” Rio smacked him. “I was happy not knowing!”

The truth is, Ryoga likes Iris too much to be afraid of her.

He can hear her breathing beside him. So far she’s been adjusting alright. She plays with the off-duty soldiers and pesters Durbe for toys and follows Rio around adoringly. She eats the food they give her for now, but her sense of taste is starting to go.

Once she starts craving blood…

“Ryoga?”

“What?”

“Are you and Mr. Shark Drake married?”

“What?”

Iris pokes him in the shoulder. “You sleep in the same bed. Like my mom and dad.”

“ _No._ ” Ryoga glares at Shark Drake, who has one eye open, and who is smirking. “We are not married. Shark Drake is...he’s scared. Of the dark.”

“Ooooh.” Iris snuggles up to him. He’s going to have to start wearing shirts with sleeves to bed. “It’s okay, Shark Drake! I’m scared of the dark sometimes too!”

 _Brat,_ Shark Drake hisses.

Ryoga elbows him in the side. _Shut up._

It’s almost four am. He has to get up in an hour. Iris will probably fall asleep as soon as the sun comes up. He should probably be irritated that she woke him up, but…

He closes his eyes.

+++++

Iris is playing with her dolls under Rio’s desk while Ryoga and Rio go over the budget. One of her dolls is a Princess Barbie, a gift from a soldier, and the other is a rough wooden figure that Shark Drake made for her.

(Shark Drake likes children, even if he does keep joking about eating them.)

There’s not enough money, but then there’s never as much as they would like. It’s hard to campaign for funding when the money is allocated in secret, by government officials who read their reports about artificial vampires and snort.

They haven’t figured out how the chips turn ordinary humans into bloodthirsty, remorseless killers, so the government won’t give them more money to try to find out. They haven’t figured out how the artificial vampires are chosen, except that they’re all either homeless people or families with difficult, often foster, children.

He and Rio have both pointed out that their enemy is smart enough to invent vampire-creating technology and to choose victims no one will miss.

 _Do better,_ they are told.

“We should redo the showers.”

“You say that every year.”

Rio writes “new showers” on the whiteboard, under “more research funding” and “bigger medical bay”. Her hands are bandaged; she went out on the last raid while Ryoga handled the paperwork. Afterwards, they’d fought about Iris. Rio wanted to make her talk about whatever had happened to her in that house full of ghouls and vampires; Ryoga didn’t.

He knows that Rio is right, that Iris is their only lead, but when she has nightmares she cries and screamed and wakes up and begs him not to send her away.

So far they remain at an impasse.

“We could do with some sniper training for the troops, too.”

“Mm.” He adds it to the board. That will mean more equipment they have to buy, some plausible way to either send troops for training or force a decent teacher to sign an NDA.

“Also,” Rio pauses, glances downwards at the desk. Iris is engrossed in her dolls. “I’ve been informed we need to catch a live specimen.”

“What?”

They had actually tried, once. They’d lost five men when the artificial vampire went berserk.

“The Council wants to see it.”

“Why?”

“I think…” Rio’s lip curls. “I think they think it will be amusing for them.”

Ryoga frowns. It’s the kind of detached, oblivious bullshit he expects from the government, but...something about the request bothers him.

“They want a fake vamp specifically?”

“...no.”

Ryoga gestures at Iris and raises his eyebrows. Rio blinks in understanding.

“Just grab a ghoul, next time you’re out there.” Rio writes “CAPTURE GHOUL” on the board. “And tell Mizael to start looking for rats.”

+++++

Ryoga and Mizael are unloading the crate with the ghoul in it -- the sound of screaming is only barely muffled by the steel -- when one of the off-duty soldiers appears to deliver the news.

“Sir, they locked Iris in one of the holding cells this morning.”

“What.” Ryoga drops the crate. It thumps loudly on the concrete floor. “Why the fuck --”

“She bit one of her dolls in half. And then she went for Durbe.”

Mizael makes an awful noise.

“He’s fine, sir, but we had to get her out of the public areas -- but she’s calmed down, and now we can’t get her out.”

“What color are her eyes?”

“Not bloodred.”

“Fuck.” Ryoga yanks the tie out of his hair. He feels disgusting, he’s still spattered in ghoul blood, and he’s been sitting in the back of a truck with an incoherent, angry ghoul for almost nine hours. He looks like hell.

He wonders if she’ll see him and cry.

“I’m sorry, boss, but with Shark Drake not here --”

“I know.” He slaps the crate. “Help Mizael get this downstairs. Make sure Durbe knows it’s there.”

Durbe already knows; Ryoga just wants Mizael to have an excuse to go look in on him.

“I’ll go get Iris.” He glances behind him, at the crowd of soldiers in the loading bay, stripping off their helmets and armor, arguing over the showers. He brought all of them back alive, but he’d almost lost the others because of Iris --

_Shark Drake._

_Master._

_We’re going. Move._

The holding cells are in the basement. They’re vaults, dark and dingy and dirty, used by his ancestors to do the dark magic experiments they used to bind Shark Drake, and to perfect their vampire hunting weaponry. Ryoga had found Shark Drake down there, deep in a pool of stagnant black water, when he was nine.

Iris is in the smallest one.

He calls her name. There’s no response.

Maybe she’s dead. Maybe she’s gone completely feral and is waiting for him to come in to attack. Maybe she did taste blood, after all, and he will never hear that tiny voice again, never have that tea party she wanted him to attend, never --

He knew this would happen.

Ryoga should draw his weapon. He’s been trained to kill monsters.

Instead he tries again.

“Iris?”

“...Ryoga?” A small sob. “I’m scared…”

Shark Drake opens the vault door. She’s in there, in the center of the room, curled up around her doll. There are bite marks in it, and a scrap of lace from the doll’s dress sticking out of Iris’s mouth.

She’s still barefoot and in her pajamas.

“I know.” _Me, too,_ he thinks. “Come on. We can go upstairs now.”

 

 


	4. three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the blood is the life.

Rio wakes him by dropping a garment bag on his head.

“What,” Ryoga says, face buried in his pillow. He spent most of last night out hunting, and most of the morning trying to organize a cover up because some of the ghouls ended up on camera, and when he came back he was informed that Iris was hiding in the basement with Shark Drake and refusing to come out. Again.

He needs to talk to her.

Rio stares down at him pitilessly. “Get up. Council meeting.”

Ryoga sees the clock. “But --”

“I can’t,” Riio closes her eyes. He blinks at her. “I can’t sit through another meeting where they tell me they’d be happy to fund our campaign against the freaks, if only they’d kill some people who mattered.”

Ryoga wants to tell her he definitely can’t sit through a meeting like that that, but he can hardly make her do it now. He sighs and sits up. At least Shark Drake isn’t in bed with him; that would have pissed Rio off.

“Fine.” He picks up the garment bag. He unzips it to reveal a suit. “...I’m not wearing this.”

“Showing up with your combat gear might be kind of hostile.”

“So?”

Rio shrugs. “Fine. Hang that up and get going. I’ll get you a car and driver.”

Ryoga rubs the sleep from his eyes. He’s exhausted, but he gets up and finds a clean uniform and straps on his knife set and laces up his boots with weary fingers. There’s a tray with still-steaming coffee and a donut outside his door.

He downs the coffee, shoves the donut between his teeth and leaves. The car, as promised, is outside, with one of his soldiers behind the wheel. Ryoga checks his phone for any briefings about why this meeting was called; there’s nothing. He shrugs. The council got their boxed ghoul a week back, so maybe they’re done playing with it.

He’s shopping online for tea sets for little girls when the car pulls up outside the nondescript government facility.

“Here you go, boss.”

“Wait in the parking garage.” Ryoga lets himself out of the car. “And call me with an emergency if I’m not out in an hour.”

His driver -- her name is Kozuki, she’s new -- grins at him. “No problem.”

Ryoga goes inside. The security guard who checks him for weapons tries to confiscate his knives and his sidearm; Ryoga refuses on the grounds that no one else in the building is prepared for a vampire attack.

“You’re being unreasonable,” the guard insists.

“You would be too if vampires were trying to eat you!”

The guard lets him take them up in the end. Ryoga is still smirking when he gets out of the elevator and enters the conference room.

The Council is really the Committee of Home Defense. Ryoga thinks they refer to themselves that way because they’re under the delusion they actually do anything. Mostly the council consists of a few key legislators, the directors of federal security and intelligence agencies, the national treasurer, one general from the military, and of course the leader of the country himself, though he rarely attends. All of the legislators are useless, and the general sees the Kamishiros as amateurs. Two of the four Directors are decent.

None of them look happy to see him, but Ryoga is accustomed to that. He doesn’t sit down.

“We asked for a vampire.” One of the legislators -- Jameson -- snaps.

“I heard.”

“And you provided us with a ghoul!”

“That’s because what you asked for was stupid.”

“Excuse me?”

“You're excused,” Ryoga says.

Jameson looks furious, but he falls silent.

The guy sitting next to Jameson Ryoga doesn’t recognize, but they lost one of the Council members to a sudden heart attack a while back, so Ryoga assumes he’s the replacement. He’s got on a bright yellow suit and he has closely cut grey hair. He looks smarmy.

Ryoga hates him on sight.

“I’m sorry, Ryoga, we haven’t been introduced, have we? I am Legislator Heartland.”

He uses Ryoga’s first name, even though Ryoga is by all rights Sir Kamishiro, or Director Kamishiro, or anything, really, that doesn’t involve talking to him like they’re friends.

“Right.”

“You’ll forgive me for asking but -- why, exactly, hasn’t your organization been dismantled and its duties handled by our military, or our federal law enforcement?”

Ryoga stares at him. “Do you guys just bring people in off the street? Jesus christ, at least have them read the briefings before you bring them in --”

“I’ve read the briefings, Ryoga, and I still don’t understand what you could possibly bring to the table that a well trained force with more traditional supervision couldn’t.”

“How many monsters has your family killed, asshole?”

“Excuse me?”

“Zero,” Ryoga says. “My family has handled this for over five hundred fucking years.”

“Legislator Heartland, this meeting isn’t to address your concerns,” The Director of the National Security Bureau, Droite, says. She’s new, too; she’s only been here the last two meetings, from what Rio said. “It’s to address the ongoing threat of the artificial vampires. I’m sure you understand.” Droite’s tone suggests that if Heartland doesn’t understand, quickly, she’s going to be upset.

Ryoga likes her.

“Sir Kamishiro, you submitted a request for an increased budget. If you explain what you need that money for, and how you plan to use it to defeat them…?”

Heartland jumps in. “Yes, some of your requests were particularly frivolous. You’re running a defense force, not a spa.”

Ryoga ignore him again. Punching him wouldn’t solve his problems, he reminded himself.

Next time he was bringing Shark Drake. Shark Drake was great for getting budgets approved.

“We have no idea who's making these vamps, or why. We don’t know how they do. We don’t know how they identify their victims. And we don’t have enough money to solve those problems.”

“But you insist, in this budget request, that you’ve been effectively clearing these nests without major incidents.” Heartland folds his hands. “Which one of those is the truth?”

A major incident means that thirty or more people are dead, or that the public was in active danger during the fight. That was definitely in the briefings, so Ryoga doesn’t bother explaining.

“We need the funding.”

“Can you describe the victims to us?”

“Last month I shot two little kids in the head.”

Heartland looks horrified.

Droite taps the table absently. “If you forward us your victim profiles, I can help you find any connections between them.”

Ryoga nods at her, and she passes him her phone. He inputs his information while Heartland clears his throat.

“Don’t you think you’re exaggerating the scope of the problem?”

“You get that if you let them keep killing homeless people and foster kids, they’ll eventually start killing people you like, right?”

“That’s not what I --” One of Heartland’s fellow legislators elbows him in the side.

“Of course it’s our duty to protect all citizens,” One of the council members says.

The Treasurer nods. ‘“I’ll look over the budget and let you know of my decision shortly.”

Ryoga nods again, arms folded across his chest. His time is being wasted here. They could have just emailed him, he thinks, and he could be at home, right now, actually getting things done.

Some of the council members stand up, but Droite and Heartland remain. Heartland motions for him to sit down.

Ryoga stands. “What?”

“I’ve pulled some of your casefiles. I’d like to go over them with you.” Heartland smiles. “You see, I was brought onto the Council to audit your organization. I’m sure you understand.”

Ryoga grins his teeth together. “Sure,” he says, and he hopes Kozuki remembers to call.

+++++

Iris is pouring Shark Drake ‘tea’ when Ryoga finds her.

Instead of a tea set she’s using a bunch of test tubes that she got from Durbe, and instead of tea she’s using chocolate milk, and instead of a table and chairs she’s using the ground and a large wet rock.

Ryoga makes a mental note to buy some more little girl things. He is not equipped for this.

“Hi, Ryoga!” Iris waves at him. “Do you want some tea?”

“Sure.” Ryoga sits down between her and Shark Drake, who is drinking his chocolate milk with utmost seriousness.

“We need cookies,” she tells him. “Can you buy me some?”

“Yeah.” Ryoga glances at her cup of milk, still filled to the brim. Her sense of taste is going quickly if she can’t even appreciate chocolate. Ryoga remembers hoarding sweets when he was a child.

Then again, he was on a diet until he was eighteen, so that his food wouldn’t slow him down during training. Regular children probably got dessert more than once every three months.

“Shark Drake said you were gonna come play with me.”

“Here I am.”

He drinks the milk. It’s so sweet his teeth hurt.

Iris toys with her saucer. “It’s pretty bad,” she says, “but I’m not allowed to use the stove to make real tea. Durbe said it was dangerous.”

“Yeah, don't do that.” He hesitates. “Listen, I need to talk to you about something important.”

Her face falls.

God, Ryoga hates to do this.

“Okay…”

“You can’t taste the milk anymore, can you?”

Iris shakes her head slowly.

“Look…” he trails off. “Can you tell me what happened? Before Mizael found you?”

“I don’t want to.”

Iris looks hopefully at him. Ryoga shakes his head.

“It’s important.”

“But --”

“It’s really important.”

Iris swallows. “There was a man.” She picks up her rough wooden doll and hugs it tightly. “He came to our house and he...made our parents go away.”

Ryoa had been able to confirm her parents’ deaths among the bodies of the ghouls using dental records. He’d explained to her they were gone. He wasn’t sure how well she’d understood it.

“He bit me,” Iris whispered. Her hand came up to her throat.

Ryoga should probably ask her what the man looked like, or if he said anything, but tiny tears are rolling down her face and he can’t. Instead he picks her up and sets her on his lap. He’s been thinking about how to bring this up with her, and putting it off, but with the audit happening…

He has to be able to show them she’s safe, if the time comes.

He holds her while she sobs into his shoulder.

“Iris, do you know what a vampire is?”

Iris sniffs. “That’s me, right?”

“Yeah.” Ryoga nods, even though she’s not looking at him. “Vampires drink blood.”

“No.”

“That’s why you can’t taste anything you eat, because --”

“No!”

“Iris!” Ryoga sucks in a deep breath. “Listen to me. You almost bit Durbe. What that man did to your parents -- if you bite anyone, you’ll be doing that to them.”

Iris freezes.

“So you have to be really, really careful.” He sets his chin on top of her head. “I’m gonna bring you some cow blood, and you’re gonna have to try drinking it, okay?”

“That’s gross,” she whispers. “I don’t want to.”

“If you start drinking the blood,” Ryoga offers, “your sense of taste will come back.”

“...really?”

“Really.”

“I don’t want to drink blood. Can’t you fix me?”

She’s looking at him hopefully. Ryoga looks up at the ceiling, so that she won’t see him cry.

“I wish I could,” he says. He holds onto her as she starts to cry again. “Sorry, kid.”

+++++

“Ryoga.”

Ryoga jumps as his earpiece switches itself on, Rio’s voice on the other end of the line. He takes aim, fires, misses.

The vampire he’s shooting at looks around and he ducks back down around the corner and reloads. He checks his belt; two clips left. Plus he has the lance.

Back up should have been there by now.

“What?”

“There’s a second nest.”

“What?”

“One vamp, multiple ghouls. Three-quarters of a mile out from the first one. Someone in Gamma squad called it in.” He hears Rio swallow. “None of them are answering their comms.”

Ryoga pauses, gun half loaded. He can hear the freak talking in the background, but he’s not listening. There are ten people with Gamma squad. That’s half the unit he came out with.

He finishes reloading and taps his earpiece to switch channels. “Anybody there?”

Kozuki answers. “Alpha squad is securing the perimeter, sir. We’re all clear.”

Ryoga leans around the corner to take aim. At some point the freak has been shot in the mouth; there’s blood all over its face and nose. A fully functional one would have found him by now, but this one isn’t healing well.

He doesn’t like it.

“Kozuki, grab someone and go check on Gamma squad. They’re not responding. Rio can give their last coordinate.”

“Sir?”

“And be careful.”

“Okay.” He hears her yell for someone else. “I’m going in.”

He taps off the earpiece and fires.

It’s a headshot, clean through the back of the freak’s skull. It drops, and he grabs his lance and goes in to check the back of its head for a chip.

He finds one, and pockets it for later study. The freak is grey, and its blood is more black than red, congealing too quickly.

“Someone bag this body and throw it on the truck.” He shoulders his lance. “I’m going in after Kozuki.”

He takes a police motorcycle over to the second nest after he’s checked in, in person, with the rest of Alpha squad. They’re all alive, but almost half of them are injured. He gives them the order: clean up, load up, and get back to headquarters immediately, and send a fresh team out to be back up for the second nest.

Something is wrong.

He leaves the bike on the side of the road and approaches. The second nest is in a barn, some distance from the farmhouse where they’d found the first. This is the first incident where the victims aren’t homeless or poor or criminals; these people, from the intel Rio passed to him, were living well enough.

Gamma squad’s vehicles are parked nearby. He checks inside; they’re both empty. No weapons have been left behind, no armor, no medical supplies. And the vans have been turned off, the keys missing. Official policy is that vehicles are supposed to be left on while they’re in the field.

He puts on his helmet and switches on the night vision. It’s completely silent; no crickets, no owls, no voices on the winds.

“Kozuki. Come in.” There’s nothing but static on the comms. “Mizael. Gamma squad. Respond.”

He gets closer. There are huge shuttered windows on each side; he cracks open one of the shutters and finds that the windows have been boarded up from the inside. That leaves the front door, which is closed, but not barred from the outside.

It opens easily. Ryoga shudders, grips his lance tightly, and enters.

He stumbles over a body.

“Fuck!” It’s in uniform. He grabs it by the ankles and drags it outside, into the moonlight. The front of his helmet comes off, and he sees the corpse’s face.

It’s Kozuki, blood all over her chin and down the front of her body armor, throat torn out. Her mouth and eyes are open. Her gun is still in its holster.

Ryoga closes her eyes and drags her a few yards further.

“Alpha team?”

“We’re headed back to base, sir. Delta squad will be on site in ten to back you up.”

“Kozuki’s dead.” He hears the sharp intake of breath. “I’m going in. Tell Delta to meet me there.”

“Sir --”

Behind him he hears a low groan.

He draws and takes aim and fires. The bullet makes a messy hole through Kozu -- the ghoul’s -- skull. It drops. There’s blood and brains in the grass.

“Sir?”

“Get back to base,” he says. He doesn’t look at the corpse. God, he’s going to have to burn it later; he can’t leave that to his subordinates.

He opens the barn door all the way this time. Nothing rushes out at him, so he takes a step inside, watching the ground for more bodies. There are none. He turns on his flashlight and sweeps it across the room; there’s no one there. And no sign of a struggle is present, either. It’s just an old barn.

Which means that the vampire is dead or gone, and so is the entire Gamma squad, and he has no idea where.

“Boss? This is Squad Delta, arriving on site,” Alit says. “Gamma squad?”

“Doesn’t look like they were here for long,” Ryoga says.

“Yes, sir.”

He swallows. There is something here, and he’s lost one soldier already. Another ten missing, including Mizael. What should he do?

Is time to write off Gamma squad as dead?

“...Delta squad. We’re searching the property.” His knuckles are white around the lance. “Grid search, start at the perimeter and move in.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Be careful,” he says, the words horribly inadequate. He turns off the earpiece for a moment, cutting out the chatter of the squad breaking up into search teams. “Dammit, Mizael, you had better be alive.”


End file.
